■LIVESTOCK
Sheep sold for world record
A sheep has sold for a world record £231,000 (US$376,200) at a Scottish livestock auction, a British sheep society said. Deveronvale Perfection, a Texel breed admired by his new owner for his “great body and strong loin,” will be used for breeding. Experts are predicting the tup, the farming term for an uncastrated sheep, will prove a bargain over the long term for his new owner. “It comes down to genetics,” said British Texel Sheep Society chief executive, John Yates, on the society’s Web site. “Breeders are looking at the decades of sheep that this blood line can produce.” Graham Morrison, who owned Perfection, said the price surpassed his wildest dreams, the Web site said. Farmer Jimmy Douglas of Cairness, Scotland, who forked out the record amount, was quoted as saying Perfection was the best lamb he had ever seen.
■PROPERTY
Qatar to invest in Songbird
Qatar Holding LLC said it would become the largest shareholder in Songbird Estates PLC, the biggest landlord in London’s Canary Wharf, after the UK property company agreed on Friday to sell shares to repay loans. Qatar Holding would own 14.8 percent of Songbird by investing in the company’s preferred stock, the Doha-based arm of the Qatar Investment Authority said in a statement. Songbird agreed to sell shares to institutions, including Qatar Holding and China’s sovereign wealth fund to repay £880 million (US$1.4 billion) in bank loans. The UK’s biggest real-estate companies tapped investors for cash this year after a slump in commercial-property values threatened to make them breach the terms of their bank loans. Songbird is the largest shareholder in the company that owns 16 of the 30 office buildings that comprise Canary Wharf, an area by the River Thames covering 39 hectares.
■INVESTMENT
CIC boosts fund investment
China Investment Corp (CIC, 中投公司), China’s sovereign wealth fund, is continuing to shift its investments away from cash and shifting billions to hedge funds and private-equity funds, chairman Lou Jiwei (樓繼偉) said. China Investment has invested “many times” the US$500 million that CIC was reported to have placed in hedge funds and private-equity firms in June, Lou said in an interview in Beijing yesterday. He said China Investment was also investing in fund-of-funds. Lou said Beijing-based CIC’s performance this year “has not been bad” following last year’s 2.1 percent decline in its global investments. He didn’t elaborate. China Investment had US$297.5 billion in assets and 87.4 percent of its global portfolio invested in cash and cash equivalents at the end of last year, the fund reported earlier this month.
■FINANCE
Shin Kong to raise funds
Shin Kong Financial Holding Co (新光金控) said on Friday that its board had approved another NT$5 billion (US$151.9 million) fund-raising plan by issuing new shares, it said in a press statement. The new shares will first be open to the company’s shareholders for subscription before being released to the company chairman or via private placement, the statement said without providing details, including a timetable. Along with the earlier US$375 million fund raised via the issuance of global depositary receipts late last month, the new funds will be used to boost the capital adequacy ratio of the firm’s life insurance subsidiary, Shin Kong Life Insurance Co (新光人壽), Taiwan’s third-largest life insurer.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
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